The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. One area in which there is a demand to increase the ease of information transfer and convenience to users relates to provision of information sharing in P2P networks. A P2P network is generally considered a network that relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the devices (i.e., peers) within the network. Accordingly, P2P networks generally do not concentrate computing power and bandwidth within servers. Rather each of the peer devices is capable of simultaneously functioning as both a client and a server to other nodes of the P2P network. The architecture of P2P networks typically involves connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections over which participant nodes can, for example, share content files containing audio, video, data, or virtually anything in a digital format. Accordingly, data such as real time data or telephony traffic could be shared using a P2P network.
Given the ubiquitous nature of mobile terminals, such as mobile phones and numerous other mobile electronic devices, P2P networks are becoming more common for sharing content and services between individuals of social groups or social networks. These social networks may center on a group of friends, relatives, co-workers, business associates, or people who share a common interest. Each individual (i.e., node) within a social network may invite other individuals to join. As such, although any particular node may generally communicate with a given group of other nodes within the social network, each of the other nodes may subsequently communicate with yet other nodes. Accordingly, within a social network, each node may be defined in terms of a degree of separation from each other node. For example, if user A invites user B to view a particular file on user A's device, and user B subsequently invites user C to view the particular file, user B may be considered to have one degree of separation from user A, while user C may be considered to have two degrees of separation from user A. Accordingly, some originating nodes may place limits on the degree of separation a node may have from the originating device in order to gain access to the content.
Current session initiation between social network members generally requires manual work by each user (e.g., group creation, device scanning, pairing, connection approvals, etc.). In addition, use of any Internet-based service hosted by a member for social networking use cases requires the other members of the social network to manually configure the access levels in order to gain access to the particular service. If the members wish to benefit from all services provided by the social networks at different access levels (e.g., degree of separation (2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. level of members)), the amount of manual configuration needed increases.
The introduction of applications for mobile devices requires configuration of settings and parameters in order for the applications to operate properly on the mobile devices. Currently, operators and service providers offer various types of device management services to manage device settings remotely by using SMS provisioning. In addition, mobile device manufacturers are introducing systems that enable remote access to mobile device settings by establishing a real-time connection between the mobile device and help desk operators over a GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA-connection. In many cases these services are not sufficient when the user of the mobile device faces malfunction in the device management system or is not technically skilled to configure the applications. Thus, when the malfunction in introducing an application occurs and when a current device management system can't assist the user, the user may be required to locate the nearest operator's shop or otherwise request assistance from a friend.
In the mobile domain, social network members typically utilize several separated applications like phone, email, SMS, MMS, instant messaging, push-to-talk, file sharing and location sharing to communicate or perform different tasks. Currently, each mobile user may be required to manually configure all necessary applications in his/her device. This means in practice that the user defines application settings and, for example, creates groups, mail lists, or macros that ease the daily usage of the applications. Another possibility is to utilize a centralized device management system, but this system is rarely available for ordinary users. Since social networks typically change often and in many cases are short-lived (e.g., ad hoc groups), manual configuration of the user's device in order to use particular applications can be time consuming and tedious for the user.
Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a method of automatically configuring services within a social network. In addition, it may be advantageous to provide a method for automatically configuring applications on a user's mobile terminal for particular applications the user desires to use within a social network. Furthermore, it may be desirable to provide a method for allowing a member of a social network to remotely access another member's mobile terminal for facilitating configuration of applications on the mobile terminal.